The Cairns Ukulele Festival seems to have been turned into a political football. It looks like local politicians became involved (always bad news) – and Bosko and Honey are no longer involved in organising it. Understandably, the prospect of funding a ukulele festival didn’t go down well with the uke-ignorant tax payers. This article in the Cairns Post, complete with mocked up photo of the mayor of Cairns, attracted plenty of uke-bashing comments from people with an obvious axe to grind:

“Do the investors in five star hotels, restaurants and first class tourist facilities really want the town to be inundated with combi vans, floral shirts and ukeleles complete with eskies of mung beans, coconuts and happy weed?”

“Now come on everybody what is this woman on ??? we’ve voted and paying for a complete Idiot with the imagination and common sense of a dead cane toad.”

ben harper excerpt was excellent…..i’m in need of a ‘player quality’ tenor uke do you think he could help me out?

will be checking out ‘cat green bike’ fo sho….

yeah, i read the school/uke/git rid of the recorder article via ukulelia and what was the first comment i noticed? Somebody immediately assuming this program was gonna convert the students into a bunch of ‘formby-esque’ buskers….you have the “f-bomb” (though I like him all right) and we have Tiny Tim (i finally crossed the threshold and downloaded tip-toe ha ha)….and so old stereo-types are hard to break i guess….

Dan: The photos are of the great ukulele players of the Corktown Ukulele Jam in Toronto, Ontario. The photos were taken by Margaret Mulligan who is an amazing photographer and a fine ukulele player. They meet every Wednesday and I join them as often as I can. torontoukes.com for more info.

2010 will be the 99th anniversary of what is believed to be the introduction of the ‘ukulele to Australia. Ernest Ka’ai, the great
‘ukulele player and musical impresario, led a troupe of Hawaiian musicians on tour of Australia in the spring and summer of 1911. It’s the earliest known tour of a Hawaiian orchestra Down Under. Cairns will have a lot to celebrate!

I hope Cairns does have a festival, I travelled 3-4 hours north just to go to the Uke club once because of the lack of ukuleles in Townsville. The ukulele store in Cairns (Music City Cairns I think its called) is the best stocked ukulele store I’ve seen in the country.